Natural Home Products

Reducing our waste is one step in reducing our footprint on Mother Earth.  Initiatives to reduce, reuse, and recycle have made great strides towards a more sustainable and positive future.  And with many communities providing recycling programs, it is easier to participate in effective recycling projects.  But our efforts to curb our waste need to be broader than just insuring that the glass, plastic, cardboard, newsprint and paper are sorted and picked up by the recycling truck.   There are many more ways to contribute to broad, positive, and sustaining efforts to reduce, reuse, and recycle.

Making sustainable initiatives easy to follow is the key to participation. Here are a few tips that can help you to reduce, reuse and recycle:

1. If you don’t need it, don’t buy it! No, really!
2. Avoid disposable items where alternatives exist. In many cities, you can also take advantage of many container re-fill programs.
3. Re-use products (ie glass jars) and repair home products, whenever possible, instead of buying new. Also, when buying new products assess your options for buying without excess packaging.
4. Reduce waste by compositing and recycling. Having recycling recepticles nearby will make recycling easy. An old ice cream bucket in the freezer can hold kitchen scraps (without the smell) until they make it out to the compost bin. Having separate containers in your kitchen for recycled newspapers, paper, cardboard, tins and glass will make your recycling job easier. If space is a constraint, consider an upright recycling bin next to the garbage so that you will be less likely to toss out a recyclable item, then you can sort your recycling when the time is available.
5. Buy recycled products. Look for products and packaging made from recycled materials, they are widely available in everything from toilet tissue to office supplies. Consider buying re-cycled eco-friendly gift wrapping, or gently used clothing or recycled building supplies.

 Now, more than ever, recycling is accessible, affordable and easy.  Recycling can have a positive and sustaining impact on the environment, so keep your eyes open for the Recycle Symbol on products you buy. Be eco-minded and asses your product choices, and think of recycling alternatives before you throw something away.

Christmas is a magical time of year that so many look forward to.  Visions of snowflakes, presents under the tree, and the joy of family and friends gathered around a beautifully decorated Christmas tree.  Planning early for a stress-free Christmas will have you enjoying the holidays and avoiding the stress of pulling it all together.   Here are a few tips to help plan a magical, stress-free holiday this year:

1. Purchase gifts as early as possible. Some people like to buy throughout the year and tuck things away; others like to make their Santa list and shop before Christmas. If the shopping malls are too hectic, try shopping on-line from the comfort of your own home. Most on-line retailers deliver within 10 days. And while shopping can be fun, the earlier the shopping is done, the easier it is to focus on other aspects of the holidays!
2. Keep a Christmas card list, complete with addresses, so that sending cards can be fast and fun each year!
3. Decorate your home early so that you can enjoy the full Christmas season.
4. Wrap as you go! Use eco-friendly gift wrapping and start an earth friendly tradition.
5. Do your Christmas baking ahead of time and freeze for the holidays. Try a Christmas bake exchange with your family and friends.
6. Plan your Christmas dinner, guest list and grocery list early! Bake some dishes ahead of time and freeze them for the big feast!
7. Enjoy!

With all the planning and preparation, remember to take the time to sit back and enjoy.  Forget any notion of perfection and remember the joy that is Christmas! Wishing you and your family a very Merry Christmas!!

Environmentally friendly gift wrapping can be a bold and beautiful solution to your Christmas gift wrapping needs.  The drab, colorless eco-friendly gift wrapping of the past has given way to a new era of bright, colourful and chic eco-friendly gift wrapping products. Many stores carry their own line of “green” gift wrapping and it is easier to find a beautiful variety of eco-friendly gift bags, recycled gift wrapping paper, and eco-friendly ribbon and bows.

If you think about it, any gift wrapping that can be re-used helps to save the planet from more waste.  There are so many gift bags available that can be re-used and if you are thinking of saving waste, really any reusable gift bag is environmental.  Beautiful silk gift bags, organza gift bags, and recycled paper gift bags are re-usable and are an environmentally sensitive solution to your gift wrapping needs. If you give or receive parcels wrapped in paper, if it can be re-used, why not practise a little eco-friendly thrift?  So wrap your gifts up green this Christmas and start an earth-friendly trend with your friends and family.

It seems that as soon as Halloween passes, Christmas shows up in the stores across North America.  Decorations, presents and all that pretty Christmas gift wrapping.   No doubt that Christmas is a joyful time of celebration, but with the increased consumption, Christmas can also be one of the least environmentally friendly times of year.  Just think of the tons of Christmas gift wrap, cards, and decorations that end up in our landfills.  Practicing a little eco-friendly thrift around the holidays is a gesture that everyone, including mother earth, can appreciate.

With a little planning, it isn’t difficult to make your holiday celebrations a little greener!  When I tuck away the Halloween decorations, I like to pull out the Christmas wrapping, gift bags and cards left over from the year before.  After taking inventory of what I have to re-use, I then like to start my holiday shopping by looking for innovative, eco-friendly gift wrapping that will match the great gifts of the season.   As the movement to eco-chic gift wrapping increases, it is becoming easier to find re-usable gift bags, many crafted from natural fibres and ecologically friendly dyes.  A natural fibre gift bag, like a vibrant red burlap gift bag, can make a great “Santa sack” for your gifts this Christmas.  Eco-friendly gift wrapping that is fun to give and a pleasure to re-use.   A little eco-friendly thrift for the holidays is a gesture that can be appreciated!

Environmentally conscious shoppers are used to bringing their own tote bags to the grocery store. This practice cuts down on the vast amounts of pollution associated with plastic bags, which aren’t conducive to biodegradation. You might have heard about a floating wasteland of plastic that’s nearly the size of Texas. By cutting down on the number of plastic bags you use during you routine grocery runs, you can help keep that mass of plastic from growing any larger.

I’ve gone so far as to carry this eco-friendly practice over to my personal life. When I give a friend or family member a gift, I make sure it’s tied up in one of my vast array of organza tote bags. These reusable sacks are not meant to be thrown away, but even if they are tossed out the environmental impact is minimal. With any luck, the people I give gifts to will find inspiration in the reusable bag phenomenon and they’ll jump onboard as well.

When I was growing up, my siblings and I used to laugh among ourselves about our grandmother’s thrifty ways. The Frugal Gourmet had nothing on her; she could make leftovers last for weeks and wouldn’t even consider wasting a scrap of food. It was only later that I realized she had grown up during the Great Depression; the scrimping and saving mentality had never really worn off.

She also had a habit of saving bows and even wrapping paper at Christmas time, warning us that we shouldn’t tear the precious wrap to shreds. Over time, grandma’s way of thinking began to appeal to me more and more, although it was more for environmental reasons than anything else. For the last several years I’ve been utilizing a reusable gift bag when I give her a Christmas present; I think the gesture is appreciated.

Making your own potpourri using fresh flowers from your garden can be a fun and inexpensive way to preserve your garden’s unique scent.  Making your own potpourri can be as simple as a bowl of lavender buds, or you can make a more complex potpourri using a variety of dried botanicals and fragrance oils. A bowl of potpourri is a great way to scent any room in your home or you can use your potpourri to make wonderful gifts for your family and friends.

With summer in full bloom, now is the time to gather your fresh flowers.  There are many common leaves and flowers that dry well for potpourri such the leaves or flowers from lavender, lemon balm, marjoram, mint, rosemary, jasmine, or roses.  You may also want to try taking small wood shavings from any cedar, cypress, or juniper trees you may have.  Once you have collected your ingredients, pull the petals off the stem of the flowers, separate all leaves and spread your ingredients out on a baking sheet. Let them air dry for several days.  Once your ingredients have dried, toss them together in a large bowl.  You may also want to add a few ingredients from your local craft store such as dried eucalyptus leaves, or sage leaves. You may also want to add a few drops of essential oils to add a stronger or more complex scent to your potpourri or to refresh old potpourri, just make sure to add the oil to a fixative before adding to your potpourri.  Common fixatives such as orris root, oak moss or cellulose fibre absorb the oil and allow a slower release of the fragrance.  These fixatives should be available at any good local craft store.

Now that your potpourri is complete you can enjoy summer’s scents year round. To retain the beauty and scent of your potpourri, keep it in a covered container until you are ready to use. Your potpourri will look beautiful in small bowls or vases and will add a nice scent to any room in your home.  For beautiful gifts or to add a little scent to your closets or dresser drawers, place a small scoop of your potpourri into small organza gift bags with ribbon ties and you have made a lovely scented satchel.  These make great gifts for friends and family to enjoy year round.

It is nice to see that increased environmental awareness is bringing even small changes in our behaviour.  More people are using reusable bags when shopping and more people are choosing reusable gift bags for those special occasions. With increased consumer choice, eco-friendly gift wrapping has certainly become more popular over recent years.

 While eco-friendly used to be associated with drab, colorless gift wrapping products, the new trend to eco-chic gift wrapping has led to more fun and stylish choices.  Even reusable gift bags are giving way to this “eco-chic” mentality, with vividly coloured natural fibres, such as jute and burlap, becoming the next trend in eco-friendly gift wrapping.  With natural dyes and adornments, these natural fibre bags are fun and stylish.  Environmentally sensitive, these eco-chic gift bags are both fun to give and great to re-use.

Many earth-conscious people are concerned with purchasing gifts that are earth-friendly. They scour the aisles for solar lights or all natural, organic cotton products. After all, they believe that giving these gifts will promote a higher awareness of the need for green products and will subsequently lead to an overall healthier lifestyle. But there is one aspect of the gift that many devoted earth lovers forget about.

That aspect is the gift wrapping. People almost always forget to pursue eco-friendly gift wrapping options. The easiest way to do this is by taking a page from the grocery store. In this way, put your presents in reusable bags. They can be as decorative and ornate as you want, and in this way, the bag is almost a gift in and of itself. After all, it’s beautiful, and it’s earth-friendly, because the recipient can use it the next time they give a gift to somebody.